Back to the office

So here I am, back in the office with my appetite sharpened - professionally speaking - by conversations in Quebec and a few days of relaxation over the Bank Holiday. On my way in to the office this morning (track work on the Trent Valley line causing all trains from Manchester to be diverted through the West Midlands leading to retimetabling, overcrowding and general confusion) I leafed through the September issue of Update - and was particularly struck by the vitality and diversity of professional life reflected in its pages.

A tag cloud drawn from the various news items and feature articles (good idea - maybe we should do that in future...) would show the whole spectrum of our profession from L to I and K - libraries, information, knowledge: living libraries, reading with teenagers, cultural olympiad, performance frameworks for local authorities, archiving academic papers, developing research skills, entrepreneurship in the public sector, why good information management is good for business, the future for knowledge management and information science, etc, etc...

And the Update coverage of work by CILIP itself shows a similar range and depth of activity: the move towards RDA (Resource Description and Access) the new cataloguing code co-owned by CILIP which will replace AACR; the work of CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal winners Philip Reeve and Emily Gravett; activity supported by CILIP's Career Development Group to help prison libraries in Africa; fifty years of the CILIP (formerly IIS) Journal of Information Science; two fascinating new books from CILIP's publishing house Facet Publishing ( Leadership; the challenge for the information profession by Sue Roberts and Jennifer Rowley, and Digital consumers; reshaping the information professions by David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands); news about CILIP's advocacy of professional standards in public libraries, the role of library and information professionals in evidence-based healthcare, and the importance of professional ethics when faced with issues around controversial stock or attempted surveillance by the security services; not to mention the report on a very busy meeting of CILIP Council which included the potentially far-reaching decision to move towards a "light touch" but compulsory CILIP CPD Scheme; etc, etc...

What a brilliant range of activities! Showing what a diverse and pervasive profession we are - and showing why we need a generic Institute like CILIP to find the commonality and community which brings us together across all of that diversity. The September issue of Update is real evidence of a profession - and an Institute - in vigorous health. Just the tonic I needed as I returned (via rail disruption set to continue for the rest of this week and get worse, if my guess is right, next week) to my desk at Ridgmount Street. It's good to be back.